(its disgusting cos the thing has a higher operational range to fire and higher front damage output. Together with an akkan extendings its range with abilities that don't use anti-matter and accuracy bonuses it gets disgustingly worse.. omg . So illums and caps get sniped from miles away regardless how weak the javelis is because its inexpensive)

How do those numbers relate to its mentioned damage output of 17 dps in the beginning?

The PreBuffCooldownTime is 6.5 - this means the frigate can do, at most, 53.5 + 27.25 + 27.25 damage every 6.5 seconds: 108 damage every 6.5 seconds: averaging out to 16.6153846 DPS. The infocard rounds it off to 17.

It's kind of like the flak frigates. They have very high listed DPS on the infocard, but it assumes that all 4 sides of the ship are able to fire at something, and even if they do, it'll be distributed over a number of ships, rather than just one.

The listed DPS is correct, but doesn't mean that that's how much damage one target ship will take... it just refers to the overall damage output of the frigate.

I wonder, do the side beams focus-fire as well? If you have a group of 10 illuminators in a row, primarily targeting some ship right in front of them, then if there are multiple ships to the sides, do all the side beams focus on one of those ships on the side? Or do they just fire at some random target in range, after taking into account armor type?

I wonder, do the side beams focus-fire as well? If you have a group of 10 illuminators in a row, primarily targeting some ship right in front of them, then if there are multiple ships to the sides, do all the side beams focus on one of those ships on the side?

In general yes; it works about the same as the auto attack picking the same target for a large portion of your ships.

Quoting Wrath89, reply 80I wonder, do the side beams focus-fire as well? If you have a group of 10 illuminators in a row, primarily targeting some ship right in front of them, then if there are multiple ships to the sides, do all the side beams focus on one of those ships on the side?

In general yes; it works about the same as the auto attack picking the same target for a large portion of your ships.

It explains why the range of the illum is low. This is because from a distance the front beam can have a clear shot while the side beams can't really pick a target at that very low angle. The trick was to drive an illuminator fleet into the heart of enemy forces to fully use all weapon banks (kinda destroys the concept of a long range frigate).

I don't know why you moved martyrdom to a higher level, it's already awful enough...

Also, I would be wary of having a support ships ability at the same level as the ship...perseverance really should be at level six then or the domina at level 4 and perseverance at level 5...

Quite honestly, I think buffs to the support ships would be far more useful than simply moving them forward into the tech tree...the only thing you really should be changing in the Advent TEC tree is where the illuminator is...

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you should probably test Advent with your buffed illuminator at level 3...Advent have the best everything else early game (and only fall to second in SC once Vasari upgrade their PMs)...they don't need to also have a beastly illuminator, just a slight improvement could make a huge difference...

Either put illums at tier 2, or buff them...but I'd be really wary of doing both at the same time without testing...